Till the Leviathan Sings
by Cyril the Sixteen Goldfish
Summary: A prequel to 'That's MY Underwear!'. Moya and Pilot have gone simultaneously insane, and the crew turn to the Peacekeepers for help. In which we discover a hitherto hidden side of everyone's favourite lieutenant and John has some explaining to do.
1. Chapter 1

**TILL THE LEVIATHAN SINGS**

_**SUMMARY:** A prequel to 'That's MY Underwear!'. Moya and Pilot have gone simultaneously insane, and the crew turn to the Peacekeepers for help. In which we discover a hitherto hidden side of everyone's favourite Lieutenant and John has some (or more) explaining to do._

**RATING:** PG-13 at this stage, probably throughout unless I get very adventurous.

**DISCLAIMER:** Characters are not mine. Apologies for everything I inflict on them.

**SETTING:** AU, a few days previous to 'That's MY Underwear!' with the everyone-who-ever-was cast.

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** This was born out of many and clamorous demands for an explanation to 'the Braca thing' when the insanity that was 'That's MY Underwear!' reached the world at large. Inject an idea had at some point on the same weekend of madness that birthed that horror, and you have this.

**Till the Leviathan Sings**

The fic © Cyril the Sixteen Goldfish

  
  
One uneventful morning, John Crichton strolled down a corridor, took a couple of well-practised turns, humming a little tune, and swung through the door of Command. There he was assaulted by an argument, which, by the sound of it, had both been going on for some time and was not going to stop anytime soon.

"No! No, I don't know what's going on! Why does everyone always assume I know?"

"Because normally when something goes wrong with this ship it's because of some leftover piece of Peacekeeper dren!"

"That is not true!"

"Yes, it is! They stuck their frelling technology all through her and look what it's done so far!

"Will you stop being so childish? Whatever it is, someone's got to go down and find out how to..."

"No. Ohhhhhh no. Why's everyone looking at me? You think I am ever going through that again? Send her!"

"Me? Why me? It's their fault this is happening!"

"Why are you always so unwilling to work for the good of this ship?"

"Wonderful! Why don't you try it, O calm one? Have you ever _been_ down there? It's disgusting!"

"You just don't want to! Nobody wants to! Nobody cares for Moya! Poor Moya..."

"Pilot? Pilot! Where the hezmana are you?"

"Where _is_ Pilot? I thought the DRDs were supposed the clean the thing out before this happened."

Nobody seemed to have noticed John as yet, and he thought it might be wise to get a little background information before joining in, so he sidled over to Crais, who was the only other occupant of the room not screaming their lungs out. He was, instead, leaning against the wall and watching the proceedings with an expression of mixed despair and condescension.

"Crais?"

"Yes?

"What the frell is going on?"

"Apparently, the chamber full of bat dren has overflowed. Why any ship should carry such a thing is beyond me, although I'm sure that someone will give me a perfectly reasonable and enlightening explanation very soon."

"Oh god…okay, um. Everyone! Calm down!"

The noise level, if anything, increased.

"Will you _shut_ the _frell_ UP?!"

The argument subsided, the entertainment value of turning one's iciest gaze on the human having superseded it.

"Ah yes, John," said Aeryn, smiling sweetly. "This would be so that you can tell us all about your brilliant plan, of course. Well, go on, then."

"I...well...um..."

"Yes? Carry on, please do."

"Well, have you spoken to Pilot?"

"We tried to, but he isn't responding," D'argo cut in, slightly more civilly, gesturing to the blank clamshell.

"And the DRDs?"

Aeryn looked round. "Has anyone...? No? No sign of the DRDs either."

"Then don't you think that maybe we should go and look for them? Come on." He marched out of the door. Aeryn glared at his back for a moment then shrugged and followed, the others behind her.

By the time they arrived at Pilot's den the argument as to whose fault this was had started again, but one glance around the door shocked them into open-mouthed silence.

All the ship's DRDs had assembled in the den and were arranged in rows on the floor, looking up expectantly at Pilot, who was watching them with the air of a benevolent dictator. John started forward, apparently intending to talk to pilot, but Aeryn grabbed a shoulder and dragged him back.

"Might be wise to find out what's going on first, don't you think?" she hissed.

"Well...okay, yeah." He turned his attention back to the den and the DRDs.

Whatever they were doing, John was quite sure it wasn't anything he'd seen them do before. As he watched, the little yellow creature on the left-hand end of the row nearest Pilot broke ranks and approached the console. As it skittered nearer, Pilot appeared to descend from his cloud, glanced down and nodded to the robot. He lowered one clawed arm and tapped out a simple rhythm on the surface of the console, which the DRD quickly emulated, tapping its antennae together.

"Hey! I never knew they could..."

"Shhh!"

Pilot gestured to the DRD, which moved to the side of the room, away from the others. It waited for a moment and then, bringing its antennae together again, began to tap the rhythm over and over.

Pilot listened for a few seconds, satisfying himself that the beat was correct. Then, gazing at the ranks of the DRDs, he raised all four arms, paused for a moment, and brought them down in a sweep that was clearly intended to encompass the entire room. Immediately, the DRDs began to move. The rows broke up and for a while the floor was apparently chaotic, but soon resolved itself into a pattern of three circles. And then, as the beat began again, the circles began to move.

First the outermost circle started to rotate clockwise, quite slowly, moving in a series of jerks in time with the beat, the antennae of its occupants twitching rhythmically, first one way and then the other. Then, also keeping perfect time, the second ring began to move in the opposite direction. And, finally, the innermost ring closed in until the six DRDs which had formed it were clustered together at the centre, just touching, and they too began to rotate, their antennae thrust forward to form a peak at the centre of the group.

Pilot had still apparently not noticed the group of assorted creatures occupying the doorway, wearing a selection of different-coloured expressions, which all, nevertheless, conveyed the same sense of complete and utter bemusement.

All except John's, that is. John's would probably have registered as 'wide-mouthed, side-splitting laughter' had Aeryn not got him in an inescapable headlock, one hand firmly clamped over his mouth. Those areas that could still be seen of his face were going an increasingly impressive shade of magenta and emitting occasional snorts.

Unaware of this, Pilot surveyed his minions and found them to be good. His moment was at hand. He reached down to the console, adjusting the lighting so that multicoloured beams played over the backs of the DRDs, highlighting their pleasing curves and glinting off the ends of their antennae, and a single ray of white light illuminated the console. He flicked a switch that would broadcast his big moment to the entire ship and drew a breath, preparing himself. This was it.

When it came, the sound made the walls of the ship vibrate. It boomed through corridors and invaded quarters, channelled through every available conduit to every part of the ship. 

"AT FIRST I WAS AFRAID, I WAS PETRIFIED..."

…in Rygel's quarters, a rare Hynerian vase filled with rare Hynerian mud jittered its way off a shelf and landed on the floor, with something between a tinkle and a squelch...

"...KEPT THINKING I COULD NEVER LIVE WITHOUT YOU BY MY SIDE..."

...in the cargo bays, a towering stack of crates came crashing down, bursting open and carpeting the room with food cubes...

"...BUT THEN I SPENT SO MANY NIGHTS THINKING HOW YOU DID ME WRONG..."

...and in the den, eight aliens cowered and wondered, terrified, what was going on, and one human lay on his back and giggled helplessly.

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

_**SETTING/SPOILERS:** At this point, trying to set this becomes somewhat complicated. So. It's AU, as mentioned before: specifically, apart from the character reinstations, I'm carefully ignoring the end of season 3, Fractures onwards. Nothing whatsoever to do with stealing plot devices in any way at all. Sort of spoilerish, due to aforementioned devices, for IYYY - ITLD2. Kindly remember that this is sillyfic; treat it as such and don't expect too much of the plot…_

  
  
  
A few minutes later, the crew had, by means of vigorous hand gestures, agreed to find and decamp to the quietest possible part of the ship and attempt to make some sort of a plan. After wandering around for some time, they concluded that this was to be found in a secluded corner of one of the deeper cargo bays and convened there. Not that it was terribly quiet - Pilot had acquired an impressive repertoire and, having started, did not seem to have any intention of stopping. However, it was muffled enough behind the crates here to hold something like a normal conversation.

Normality, of course, is relative. 

Zhaan, as was usual in those times of crisis when the Uncharted Territories were simply too weird and utterly inexplicable for anyone else to cope with, had assumed command. She sat cross-legged on the floor, serenely interrogating the hysterical crew, starting with the obvious exception. 

"John…Aeryn, let him go, he has to be able to speak…John, what exactly is so funny?"

"Funny!" spat Jool. "The Human thinks this is _funny_. Great. Really amusing, right until the point where we actually have to go somewhere."

John grinned at her and caught his breath.

"Funny? This is…better'n funny…wow…" he collapsed back into fits of laughter.

"John!" Zhaan snapped. "Jool is right. As long as Pilot is ignoring us, we have no way to control the ship. You seem to know something about it?"

"Know something about it? Well, I recognise the songs, if that's what you mean…disco classics of Earth, and I have no idea how Pilot got hold of them. Or why he's singing them instead of flying the ship, before you ask."

"Dis-kow?"

John waved his hands expansively and got as far as "it's from Earth…um…" before Zhaan silenced him with a glare.

"I think we can do without the explanation. Does anyone else have anything to contribute?"

"I…I can't…Moya…everywhere…"

It was Stark. He had, through most of the conversation, been slumped against the wall antisocially wearing his normal expression of mild panic. This appeared to have graduated to extreme panic - he was coiled into a ball, rocking back and forth and muttering incoherently, punctuated with the occasional sob.

"Stark? What's wrong?"

"Moya! Inside…inside everyone. Can't you feel it?"

"Inside…?"

"Yes!" he snarled. "Inside. All of us…creeping…she was never…"

At this point, the conversation might have been interrupted by a break in the incessant singing still reverberating through the ship. Or, indeed, it might have been interrupted by Moya suddenly lurching sideways, throwing everyone onto their backs in a large and disorganised heap. However, these paled in comparison to the level of interruption achieved by the pile of crates which chose precisely this moment to fall over on top of the assembled aliens, distracting them very effectively. 

"Oh, jesus."

"Jee-zuz?"

"Forget it. Is everyone alive?"

"What kind of a stupid…?"

"Shut up, Chiana. Is anyone not alive?"

"Oh, well, that's even better, isn't it? What do you want them to do? Wave? Shout?"

There was a quieter, slightly more controlled crash from a short way away and Aeryn sat up in the middle of the wreckage.

"Ow. What was that?"

"Something fell on us."

"Helpful. Very helpful. Well, at least John's stopped laughing."

"Hey! Just because you didn't get the joke…"

Another few crashes. A blue arm appeared from the pile and cleared a path for the rest of Zhaan. She shook her head dazedly.

"What…what happened?"

"We've been through this…"

Zhaan gave up, pulled herself out of the wreckage and began heaving crates off the pile, looking for the members of the crew who had not yet made an appearance. Those who had gave up on the conversation as a dead loss and scrambled up to help her.

Jool was fairly easy to find, as she woke up and, finding herself in a dark and pointy place, screamed vigorously until someone followed the noise, unearthed and kicked her. This led to the discovery of Crais, who had, apparently, attempted to leap to her rescue and instead ended up being buried lying on his face a little way away, unable to shout due to his mouth being squashed against the floor. After searching for a while, Aeryn noticed several tentacles protruding from under the heap. Removing a few crates revealed D'argo, out cold but apparently alive. Stark was more or less uninjured, having been protected by being curled into a ball, but was no longer even slightly coherent.

Nobody could find Rygel. The crew were about to give up the search with badly-disguised relief when he appeared from behind a bulkhead. As usual in times of crisis, he had, with his normal skill, removed himself from the line of fire.

"That does it! This is intolerable. Not only has this ship, which is insane at the best of times, now gone _completely_ mad, it is attempting to kill us! If we ever succeed in wresting control of this object from the lunatic driving it, you will oblige me by dropping me off at the nearest planet with some respect for monarchy."

"Fine, whatever. Could we concentrate on the immediate problem now?"

"What _is_ the immediate problem? Does anyone have any idea what caused that?"

"Nope."

"You wouldn't…"

"Do you?"

"Um."

"Well, whatever it was, it seems to have shut Pilot…"

"AH, AH, AH, AH, STAYIN' ALIVE, STAYIN' ALIVE…"

"…spoke too soon."

"What?"

"SPOKE TOO SOON!"

"WHAT?!"

"_SPOKE TOO_...ah, frell, never mind."

Aeryn shook her head and turned to leave the room, managing two firm and assertive strides before she was felled by a second resounding crash. This was closely followed by a third, this one hard enough to fling everyone in the room against the wall at high speed, ending in a large heap consisting of more or less every crate in the room, from which protruded a variety of limbs. The pile shifted and a hand made one or two half-hearted movements then, defeated, lay still.

There was silence. Nobody was conscious enough to appreciate it but, nevertheless, it was there.

It didn't last long.

_To be continued..._


	3. Chapter 3

**_A/N:_** I would, at this point, like to apologise for this chapter. It's sort of boring, and not very original, and not coming up to standard for silliness at all. I mean, it's still pretty silly. It's just not silly **enough**. But bear with me, okay? The next level of insanity will ensue in the next chapter, which is halfdone and I should really stop grovelling now. This is what 2am does to a person. Goodnight. 

John awoke in a dark world full of heavy, pointy things. A world which was, against all expectations, bouncing rhythmically, in time with a steady, muffled thumping coming from somewhere nearby. He groaned. An awakening like that never, ever meant that good things had been happening. 

Oh yes, and there was music. It sounded like - he strained his ears - D-I-S-C-O. Disco...disco...Pilot! He struggled to sit up and succeeded, after a while, in dislodging enough crates to push out his head and shoulders and look around. He could now identify the source of the thumping and bouncing as the heavily-booted feet of a large number of Peacekeeper troops milling around the room, peering into corners and digging into the piles of junk and, he realised with amusement, doing it with their footsteps in perfect time. 

The amusement quickly faded when one of them glanced in his direction and began to hurry over, head bent to shout into his comm. John struggled to free the rest of his body from the heap and only succeeded in bringing it down slightly more heavily on his legs. Whatever happened, he was stuck until someone decided to dig him out. Looking at the expression on this guy's face, it wouldn't be too long until that happened, but, somehow, that wasn't very comforting. 

Unexpectedly, his arms were wrenched behind his back and his wrists snapped into what felt like handcuffs. The first man was still in front of him - someone else must have noticed him, too. He snarled and tried to twist out of the second person's grip, but with his legs trapped and his arms already shackled, he had no chance of preventing himself from being dug out of the heap, dragged to his feet and frogmarched out of the room between the two. 

~~~ 

Five minutes and several corridors later, John stood in the doorway to the den for the second time that solar day. He understood perfectly well that handcuffed between two heavily-armed Peacekeepers who were, in all probability, going to kill him, was a bad time to start laughing. They certainly didn't seem to be terribly amused. Then again, they didn't have the right alphabet, let alone the general knowledge, to understand that Pilot's flailing arms were, in fact, forming letters - and the significance of those letters. A 'Y' and an 'M', followed by 'C', then 'A'. The disco lights swung dramatically and refocused on his face as he swept into the next verse, head raised and arms executing elegant arcs through the air in front of him. 

John giggled. The leather-clad figure gazing up at the spectacle on the console cocked its head at the sound, then turned and gave John a warm smile. He stopped giggling. Scorpius strode over and leant forward until he could speak directly into John's ear, over the racket that Pilot was making. Even so, he had to raise his voice. 

"I wondered why we were able to catch up with you so easily, Crichton. I believe I may have found my explanation." 

_Bluff?_ John wondered. _Oh, who're you kidding? He knows you can't fix this, and he knows you're crippled. What, exactly, do you have?_

"Do you have any idea at all what has happened to this ship, Crichton?" 

"Do you?" 

"I may. The Peacekeepers have some..." 

Scorpius cut off in mid-sentence, the last shouted syllable echoing through the suddenly silent room, and smiled again. John glanced around nervously, wondering what had caused Pilot to shut up so suddenly and aware that when Scorpius looked cheerful bad things had a tendency to follow. Eventually, he spotted the back end of one of the Peacekeepers who had formerly been scuttling around the room, bent over the console next to Pilot, who was, as well as silent, suddenly very still. Unnaturally so. 

"What," he asked softly, "have you done to our pilot?" 

Scorpius waved an arm airily. 

"Nothing permanent, so don't be concerned for his wellbeing. He's merely drugged for the time being, to allow us to talk." He walked back towards the console, turning to continue his interrupted explanation. 

"As I was saying, the Peacekeepers have some experience with pilots in whom the process of indoctrination proves too...stressful. Are you aware that the species has some telepathic ability as far as the occupants of its ship are concerned?" 

"No?" 

"They do. Often, in the case of the ones who become...irrational, they use this to find a kind of alternative occupation - a form of distraction. I imagine, from your reaction to the nonsense which your pilot is singing, that his chosen scenario came from your own memories." 

_So that was what Stark was whimpering about. Weird._

"Basically, you're telling me that Pilot has gone insane, which I knew?" 

"Yes." 

"And that it's because of what the Peacekeepers did to him, which I could have guessed?" 

"Yes." 

"And he's reading our minds, which is why he's gone all disco diva in a place which, frankly, is not too near to a karaoke bar?" 

Scorpius sighed and appeared, for a moment, to be debating whether it could possibly be worth asking for an explanation of the terms 'disco diva' and 'karaoke bar'. The human seemed determined to have made it his lifework to be as confusing as possible to the poor translator microbes, but the meaning of the sentence was still more or less clear, so he decided against it and settled, instead, for complaining about the unnecessary questions. 

"Yes. Crichton, is it a normal method of conversation on your planet to restate the entirety of what has just been said to you before you contribute something?" 

"Just wanted to be sure. So, you know what's wrong with Pilot, which is a step up from anyone on this ship. Do you know how to fix him?" 

"So you can leave? This hardly sounds like a mutually beneficial agreement." 

_Ahhh. So he wants something. Houston, we may have a chance._

"Oh, really? Well, what would you like to be your benefit? 'Cause, you know, we're kinda short on...well, anything, really." 

"There is only one thing I want from you, and you are perfectly aware of what it is." 

"Yeah, see, I thought you might have got that by now, what with putting a chip in my frelling head. Or did that not work?" 

"It worked to an extent. However, it appears that I still need your assistance to decipher the information it provided." 

"And if agree to this, you'll fix Pilot?" 

"If it's possible, yes." 

"And if I don't?" 

"Your ship is going nowhere, you are hopelessly outnumbered and there are...ways of obtaining your cooperation. It would be easier for both of us, and especially for you, if you were to agree." 

"How do I know you won't just take my friends prisoner and use your other methods on me to start with, or get the information you want and then refuse to keep your half of the bargain?" 

Scorpius sighed, again. He had, in fact, been planning to keep to the bargain, but one of the disadvantages of his infamously...direct...methods of questioning was that people weren't inclined to trust you when you offered an honest deal involving no torture whatsoever. 

"I can offer you several guarantees. Firstly, your friends can remain aboard your ship if they wish to - there is no need for anyone to come aboard the command carrier except yourself. The...treatment of your pilot can be completed before you begin to help me, if you wish." 

"And you know I won't split when he's fixed how?" 

"You will be on the carrier from the start-" he held up a hand to stall John's next protest "-and there are these." He held up two heavy black leather-and-metal circles, adorned with buttons and little lights. "I-yensch bracelets - a guarantee to me that you will not attempt to escape without fulfilling our bargain, and to you that you will not be harmed." 

"What do they do?" 

"They link the nervous systems of the wearers. Each feels the other's pain, and if one dies, so do both. I will wear one; you will wear one. I cannot harm you without doing the same to myself, and you will not attempt to escape because..." 

"I don't want to be linked to you for the rest of my life. Well, that's true enough." 

"So, do we have a deal?" 

"I...guess so, yeah." 

_

To be continued...

_


	4. Chapter 4

**__**

A/N: Two chapters in three days. Go me. And here beginneth the explanation! Before you hate me, just remember that I **could** have made this slash. Be thankful. Be oh, so very thankful.

John lay in the dark and stared at the bottom of the bunk above him, which creaked occasionally as Aeryn moved in her sleep. Of the crew, she was the only one who had elected to come with him rather than stay on board, presumably out of some kind of nostalgia for her Peacekeeper days. Wriggling around to try and find a position in which some bone or other didn't poke into something hard, he wondered how anyone could possibly be nostalgic for sleeping on something which seemed to have been designed as a special variety of endurance training. His quest for comfort wasn't helped by the fact that Scorpius was apparently still awake, and receiving the second-hand sensations of somebody else was very surprising and not a little alarming - every time Scorpius scratched his nose or stubbed his toe John jumped at the unexpected feeling. 

He turned over and burrowed into the pillow, reaching under it for the comforting shape of Wynnona, with whom he had a relationship very much like the one he had had with Bingle the bear at age six. Reached further. Scrabbled a bit. Was suddenly very wide awake indeed, throwing the pillow off the bed and revealing an expanse of extremely empty sheet underneath, trying to be quiet about it so as not to wake Aeryn up, lifting up the mattress and feeling under the bunk. There was, unfortunately, no doubt about it. The pistol was gone. 

Unfortunately, that is, for whatever poor soul had been responsible for her removal. John tried to think through lack of sleep and utter fury. It couldn't have been Scorpius, he had been on Moya all day overseeing Pilot's treatment. But he was the only other person with the code for John's door - he'd been adamant about that, which made sense, considering. So he must have been behind it. Someone he trusted with his life. 

Oh. Of course. Who else? 

~~~ 

Fifteen minutes later, after getting lost, having computer terminals refuse to tell him anything and accosting several random Peacekeepers, John had succeeded in locating the door belonging, or at least lent, to Lieutenant Braca. He glared at it and, finally, when it failed to melt, stabbed at the pad beside it. 

"Braca! Wake up!" 

Silence. 

"Wake _up_, dammit!" 

More silence, then a voice which had the definite feeling of a calm veneer under extreme strain. 

"What do you want, Crichton?" 

"I want to come in." 

"Why?" 

"Let me in, you little..." 

"_Why_?" 

"You've got Wynnona, and you are going to give her back." 

Yet more silence, this time with overtones of extreme puzzlement. 

"And who, exactly, is Wynnona?" The veneer was rapidly disintegrating entirely. John snarled. 

"Wynnona is my pulse pistol. And you, Igor, have got her. In there." 

"Igor?" 

"Never mind. Let me in!" 

The door slid open, revealing a harassed-looking Braca. He had apparently succeeded in getting more or less dressed at some point since being awakened, unless he slept in his leathers. John wouldn't have put it past him. 

"Right! Give her back!" 

"Crichton, I don't have your weapon." 

"Oh yeah? So where is she?" 

"I can't tell you that. Scorpius' orders. He thinks you might do something stupid - and I agree." 

"Stupid? I wouldn't do anything stupid. Why's he think I'd do something stupid?" 

Braca raised one eyebrow disbelievingly. It was the first open display of emotion John had ever seen from him. 

"Well...all right. But I want my gun back. She's important to me, man." 

"It is merely a pulse pistol. A standard weapon. How can you have formed an emotional attachment to an inanimate object?" 

"Christ! Didn't you ever have a teddy bear or something when you were a kid? A toy? Oh, no, sorry, I forgot, Peacekeepers don't believe in children." 

"Your interpretation of the system of training begun in childhood is..." 

"Okay, Spock, I didn't mean it. Would it really hurt you that much to disobey ol' man Scorpy just this once, though? Not as if he'd ever find out." 

Braca couldn't have looked more incredulous if John had asked him to don a traditional morris-dancing outfit and give a demonstration to every officer who passed his door for the next twenty-four hours. Clearly another tactic was needed. 

It was then that John had his amazing idea. 

Years ago, back on Earth, someone had given him a book of fairytales, including one in which a man had tried to escape death by challenging the Grim Reaper to a game of chess. He had lost, if John remembered correctly, but Death was a rather more worthy opponent than a stuck-up Peacekeeper lieutenant, all things considered. Wasn't likely to have a chessboard, though. However... 

John grinned. Braca eyed him suspiciously. 

"Tell me, lieutenant...do Peacekeepers have any tradition of, uh, duelling?" 

"Of what?" 

"Duelling. You know - I fight you, I win, you give me my gun back, everyone's satisfied and we get to engage in manly combat. And if I lose you get something from me. Traditionally that would be my life, but I'm thinking Scorpy would be pissed if we started killing each other. Name your stake." 

"You truly believe that you would have any chance of beating a trained Peacekeeper officer in combat?" 

John tried to suppress another smile. He'd been right. 

"I dunno. I'm up for it, though. How 'bout you?" 

"Peacekeeper regulations strictly prohibit..." 

"Oh, stop quoting the damn instruction manual. You're just chicken, aren't you? Scared of the inferior being, that it?" 

"Of course not!" He floundered for a moment, then came up with something. "The bracelet. You think Scorpius wouldn't notice if we were to...doo-ul?" 

"Then we do it the non-physical way. A game, if you like. Chess is traditional, but unless there's been a really weird coincidence you don't have a set and neither do I. I do, however, have these." He fished in a pocket and, triumphantly, brought out the pack of battered playing cards he'd packed when he set off on the Farscape mission, as a kind of lucky charm. Since then he'd kept them around his person and used them for nothing but the occasional game of solitaire - the only other person on the ship who showed much interest in complicated games was Rygel, and John didn't trust him not to steal them, or, for that matter, eat them. 

"And what are they?" 

"Cards. Playing cards." 

Braca stared at them curiously. Peacekeeper games tended towards to warlike, strategic end of the spectrum or those requiring physical endurance, so the idea of playing a game with a few bits of thick, grubby paper was quite alien to him. 

"How do they work?" 

"That depends what you're playing. Here, look..." John stepped forward to show the cards to Braca, which quite coincidentally left him standing inside the lieutenant's quarters. "See, there are four suits - that's the different-shaped little blobs - in two colours, and a set of ten numbers and three, uh, people, for each." 

"I see. What do you propose we do with them?" 

"Well, I suppose the traditional one would be poker. Do you have a table?" 

Braca looked helpless. He seemed to have agreed to this without noticing himself doing it, and was now obliged to participate in the human's insane scheme. 

"Well, do you?" John waited for a response and then, concluding that Braca was going to be no help to him, pushed past, commandeering a low, round table and a couple of extremely uncomfortable-looking chairs from around the room. 

"Well, sit down! Or are you going to stand in the doorway all night? Thinking of which, could you close the door before somebody notices and gets suspicious?" Braca punched at a button by the side of the door and stumbled over to the table, flopping into the seat opposite John. 

John, in the meanwhile, was trying to deal a game of poker but was running into some minor difficulties, foremost of which was that he had never actually played it. Oh, he'd watched his dad play when he was a kid, although from a vantage point of three feet off the ground it was quite hard to see detail, and he vaguely remembered something about making bets and aces being a good thing to have. The groups of people had tended to be larger than two, of course, but that probably wasn't important. They didn't have anything to bet, either, which might make deciding who had won a little tricky. 

"Crichton? What are you doing?" 

He looked up, startled, to discover that he'd been tapping the three of clubs against the side of the table for long enough to make an appreciable dent in its side. 

"Damn..." he muttered. 

The pause had allowed Braca to recover some of his composure, and he managed to muster an affronted glare. 

"Crichton, if you intend to force your way into my quarters and then sit and do nothing all-" 

"Calm down, sweetie," John snapped. "I've changed my mind. I think this situation requires something...simpler. We're going to play snap." 

"Snap?" 

"Snap," he confirmed, shuffling the cards and placing the stack in the middle of the table. "We'll play a practice round first. Take a card and put it in front of you with the blobs facing up." 

Braca picked up the ace of diamonds. John picked up the eight of hearts. 

"And another. Nope...okay, another...and another...and another...snap!" 

Braca jumped. "What?" 

"Snap. See, you got the queen of spades and I got the queen of hearts, and they match. So I shout 'snap!' and then I take your cards and add them to mine, and we carry on. And then, when we finish the pack, the one with the most cards wins. Shall we do it properly now?" He took the two piles of cards, shuffled, and replaced them on the table. "Right. You go first." 

The four of clubs showed its face. 

_Slap_. Ten of spades. 

_Slap_. Eight of clubs. 

_Slap_. Jack of diamonds. 

_Slap_. Two of hearts. 

_Slap_. Two of diamonds. 

"Snap! Now, you have to take something off." 

"_What_?" 

"Oh, that's half the fun! And, more importantly, it's how we know who's won at the end. Every time you lose a round you take off an item of clothing, and I do the same, and when we get to the end the one with least on loses." 

Braca didn't dare ask how one knew when the game was over. Judging by the human's apparent level of sanity, the answer would probably be 'when my toe tells me so' or 'when you suddenly become a small asteroid and start eating the table'. Besides, there was no possible way that this could really be happening. He gave John a glazed look, decided that, since he was dreaming, it didn't really matter what he did, and slowly removed his jacket. 

John smiled. One round in, and he was winning. The game was going well. But there was still something missing. Something which, if he remembered correctly, had been an absolutely vital component of his father's poker games. 

"Tell me, lieutenant, do you have anything to drink?" 

"You want water?" 

"No, no, no. _Drink_. Alcohol." 

"Oh. Well, yes. We are provided with a supply. The Peacekeepers understand their troops' need for-" 

"Enough already. Just get it out, yeah?" 

"I fail to see why-" 

"Part of the ritual. Humour me, okay?" 

Braca sighed and went to fish around in a cupboard, eventually unearthing a large bottle of colourless liquid and a couple of largish black cups, which he placed on the table and filled from the bottle. John picked one up and sniffed it, then took a sip. He blinked for a while, until his eyes stopped watering. 

"Whew. Strong stuff. Tastes a bit like vodka." 

"Something from your planet?" 

"Yeah. Made from potatoes - tubers," he added, to Braca's questioning look. 

"Interesting. I believe that this is fermented from the ship's waste." 

John made a careful mental note to think of the stuff as vodka, and took a bigger mouthful. "Not bad. Anyway, shall we continue?" 

_Slap_. Seven of diamonds. 

_Slap_. Five of clubs. 

_Slap_. King of hearts. 

_ Slap...Slap...Slap..._

~~~ 

On reflection, John mused, the 'strip' method of scoring had possibly been a mistake. Of course, he'd decided on it before he realised just how much _stuff_ Peacekeepers seemed to keep on their persons, or at least this one did. The pile of miscellaneous items beside his chair included his jacket, a comm. (there had been quite a long argument about whether or not that counted as jewellery and, if so, whether it counted as a removal. John had eventually conceded defeat and let it pass) a pulse pistol and its holster (another argument there, over whether they were one item or two), a sort of wristband with assorted little devices in and some unidentifiable metal objects that Braca had found in his pockets (by that point, John was past arguing). The net result of this was that, despite having been losing quite badly, the two men were in exactly the same state of dress, or undress: clothed from the waist down. 

The worst part of it was that the Peacekeeper seemed to be getting into the swing of things now. He certainly wasn't losing as often as before. John wondered if his training had included reaction speed. It probably had, and now it was starting to show - If John didn't pull his act together, he ran the risk of losing. At snap, ferchrissakes! To someone who could have defined 'anal-retentive', although he'd started to look more cheerful now. In fact, he was positively beaming as he sloshed more of the whatever-it-was into their cups. The bottle was a quarter empty, but it was a big bottle. It would last. 

"Another round, Crichton?" 

_Slap. _

To be continued...


	5. Chapter 5

_**A/N:** You **want** slash? I mean, not that I'm opposed to slash, but...Braca! You're too twisted even for me. Go and stand in the corner. Thank you._

This evening was turning out to be a real voyage of discovery, John mused. Among his nuggets of knowledge was the fact that, despite their machismo, the sebacean system's ability to tolerate alcohol was somewhat worse than a human's. Braca was probably conscious, but he was lolling back in his chair and singing what seemed to be some sort of a battle march, in which the word 'blood' had featured, if his count was right, forty-three times so far. John had long ago given up on expecting him to play snap - pride could do many things, but it couldn't work miracles and that was what it would have taken to gain Braca's concentration and restore his motor skills at this point. 

Not that John himself was in a much better state. He could probably have told you what colour a card was, just, but beyond that he would have been in the realm of guesswork. Much better to just...lean back in this nice comfy leather chair and close his eyes... 

Thence came Interesting Scientific Revelation number two, and it was this: 

The intoxication of the neural clone of one's mortal enemy increases in direct proportion to the intoxication of oneself. 

Harvey was, to put it mildly, hammered. Harvey had no apparent inhibitions at the best of times. And when he was drunk he got horribly creative, the net result of which was that the entire interior of John's brain had been painted shocking pink and decked out in paper streamers. In the centre of the carnage, flat on his back and apparently asleep, lay everybody's favourite clone, surrounded by oddly-shaped glass bottles, mostly empty and containing the dregs of something green and wearing, over his permanent leather suit, a spangly red bikini. And...a party hat. A blue one. With stars on. 

John sat down heavily on the purple fun-fur sofa and wondered what to do. 

"You should do this more often, John. It's really rather enjoyable." 

He looked up. Harvey had opened his eyes and was propped up on one elbow, grinning at him. 

"Wuh?" Harvey rolled his eyes and sat up, grabbing a half-full bottle on the way and settling into the classic, cross-legged 'drunk philosopher' pose, 

"Inhibitions, John, inhibitions. You don't have any. Because you're drunk, see? And that...._that_ means I get to play with your," he giggled and leaned closer, continuing in a conspiratorial whisper, "with your innermost fantasies. You have some very strange thoughts, m' boy." 

"'m not that frelling drunk..." 

"Oh no? You are, though norm'ly I would hes - hesssitate t' point out the obvious, stark naked in the room of possibly the most...most peacekeeperish Peacekeeper in the Peacekeepers. Who is, may I say, wearing no more than you." 

"That was in the rules! Can't...can't break the rules. Game's slowed down a bit now, though...ver' slow..." 

He collapsed sideways onto the sofa. In the real world, his body slumped further down in its chair and began to snore gently. Lieutenant Braca regarded it for some time, before apparently deciding that nothing was to be done and, instead, finishing both his and his opponent's drinks. He was vaguely aware that at some point there could well be repercussions, but now wasn't the time to think about that. Much, much too tired... 

~~~ 

Some hours later, John opened his eyes to find his mouth full of fun-fur and his world painfully full of Harvey. To be precise, the clone was hitting him repeatedly about the head with what seemed to be a rubber mallet. Despite the pain, John became increasingly conscious that the thumps seemed to be more resonant than one would expect from the impact of rubber on cranium. Yes. It sounded distinctly...hollow... 

John opened his eyes, and immediately squeezed them tightly shut as he was assaulted by horribly bright light, his head still pounding. He opened them again, just a crack, and looked around. Then he looked up. Then he looked down. 

Then he remembered. Very suddenly, and in agonising detail. 

And _the_n he realised that the pounding was not just inside his head. It was, in fact, all around him. It was coming from the door. 

He wished fervently to be somewhere else. This failed. 

"Lieutenant Braca! Are you in there? Lieutenant!" 

Oh, _shit_. 

Scorpius. 

"_Lieutenant_!" 

John leant across the table and grabbed Braca by the shoulders, shaking him until he opened his eyes and stared back in muzzy incomprehension. 

"Wurgh?" 

"We have a problem." 

Braca blinked at him a few times. Why was the human in his quarters? 

"Pay attention. We. Have. A. Problem. Big problem. You understand?" 

Braca managed to wake up and recover enough dignity to sneer. 

"You certainly have a problem, Crichton. How you got into my quarters I don't know, but when I report that I have found you in my here, without authorisation, in a state of complete undress, you will..." 

He paused for a moment while his eyes took in the cards on the table, the empty bottles, the glasses and, finally, himself. He made a small, barely audible noise. 

There was another thump. The two men stared at one another, suddenly united by mutual horror. 

"LIEUTENANT!" 

"Whatarewegoingto..." 

"Get dressed, for a start!" 

The tableau dissolved into a scurry of frantic movement and recovery of the clothes that had been haphazardly flung about the room the previous evening. When the door slid open, perhaps a minute later, to reveal Scorpius and Aeryn (Aeryn? What was she doing there?) standing side by side and the room's two occupants spun round and tried to look innocent, respectful and nonchalant all at the same time, they were, if not fully-clothed, at least somewhat covered. 

Had the situation not been quite so nerve-wracking, John would have longed for a camera - the identical expressions of horrified betrayal on the two utterly different faces would have made a heart-warming picture for years to come. 

Scorpius opened his mouth and hesitated. It was the first time John had ever seen him so completely at a loss. Although, looking at them, hair on end, Braca clutching his jacket closed over bare skin, John's trousers on backwards and neither having yet succeeded in finding their socks, it was suddenly all too clear why both newcomers looked as astounded as they did. 

"Hey, this isn't what it, uh, looks like..." 

There was always a possibility that tired cliché would sound original and convincing this far from home. 

Aeryn raised one dark eyebrow and folded her arms, assuming the stance native to women everywhere who are not planning on moving an inch until they get an explanation, and you'd better make it a good one. There went that hope. 

_To be continued..._

**_A/N:_** The next (and final) chapter may be a while coming, as I'm a little scared of writing it. You'd be scared, too. 


	6. Chapter 6

_**A/N** Finished! Finally! A very long chapter in which you get all the explanation you could possibly want and I show my startling talent for storytelling through innuendo and not much else. Since I've been so mercilessly cruel to everyone for the last few chapters, I've, um, continued to be mercilessly cruel, although John gets it better than some people. I've also done something I swore I'd never do regarding couplings, for which I am truly sorry. Completed in the middle of the night in absolute determination to get it done before S4 UK-premieres tomorrow, so apologies for any odd brain-not-working-it's-1am mistakes. Anyway. Here it is._

There was a very long, very awkward silence, during which Braca rearranged himself into the closest approximation of 'attention' he could muster without letting go of his jacket and John tried to maintain eye contact with Aeryn's amazingly penetrative contemptuous glare. 

"Lieutenant Braca," began Scorpius. John finally gave up the struggle and dropped his gaze. He was beginning to suspect Peacekeeper training of including staring contests as well as everything else. Then again, it might just as easily have been Aeryn. 

Braca examined his bare toes in minute detail. 

"I am quite certain that you will provide me with a reasonable explanation of this...of _this_...when you report to my quarters in half an arn. As for you, Crichton, I leave you in the capable hands of Officer Sun." Scorpius gave the two something that probably wasn't a friendly smile and walked off. Braca scuttled back into the room, returning a moment later to push John's shoes into his hands and shove him firmly out into the corridor, shutting the door behind him. 

"No socks," he muttered. "Oh well..." 

He glanced up. Aeryn was still staring at him. 

"Well?" 

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." 

"One of the most important things I have learned about your species from my time with you, Crichton, is that if it can do something really, unbelievably idiotic, it probably will. I will believe almost anything." 

"We were playing a game." 

"I see. Do all human games take all night and involve removing your clothes, or only the good ones?" 

John couldn't think of an answer to this that wouldn't earn him a slap, so he settled for putting his shoes on, which also provided a valid excuse for not looking at Aeryn. When he looked up again, he was just in time to see her disappear round a corner at a high-speed stride. He jumped to his feet in pursuit, and managed to catch a glimpse of her jogging round another corner way ahead of him. He resisted the urge to turn round and check she wasn't running across the corridor behind him, reminding himself that this, however ridiculous, wasn't actually an episode of _Scooby Doo_. 

~~~

Elsewhere on the ship, Scorpius had been on his way to sit in his quarters and dread what Lieutenant Braca, whom he had hitherto regarded as being capable of rebellion in the same way that a sun at ten metras was inconspicuous, was going to tell him. He had, therefore, been rather grateful at being summoned to an emergency meeting - something about an alien intruder on the ship, which the Peacekeepers, with their obsession with purity, tended to get very upset about. Personally, Scorpius wasn't very concerned, since alien lifeforms occasionally found their way on board, and were generally harmless or, at the worst, annoying. This one seemed to fit the mould - it apparently had a penchant for finding its way into people's quarters and stealing items of clothing. 

Actually, he was more worried by the mysterious stabbing pain in his side and the fact that his legs had started, inexplicably, to ache. It was probably nothing, but since in his body's case hybrid vigour wasn't as noticeable as hybrid not-quite-working, he made a mental note to have a medic check him over. 

~~~

John wasn't entirely sure when this had turned into a game of tag, but there was no doubt that that was what it now was. Aeryn was running flat-out and he was having a hard time keeping her in view, let alone catching up. He was getting tired, too, and the increasingly painful stitch wasn't helping, so he was grateful to see her duck into what he suddenly realised was their quarters, although she'd brought him by a very circuitous route. Of course, trying to slow down and take a sudden corner at the speed he was now running, he stood a significant risk of skidding and falling over. This was exactly what he did, with the added bonus that he clipped his head hard on the doorframe as he went down. 

~~~

Scorpius barely suppressed a yelp and clutched at his head, stumbling sideways until he reached a wall and leant against it, wondering frantically what could be going on. Headaches he'd experienced, the occasional moment of blinding agony being an unfortunate consequence of his mismatched breeding, but that had felt exactly like being hit with something extremely heavy. He looked around suspiciously to check that this wasn't some kind of bizarre joke or, alternatively, an assassination attempt, but the corridor was devoid of life. 

He lowered a hand from his now impressively throbbing skull, which was when he caught sight of the bracelet encircling his right wrist. Glaring at it, he wondered if it was possible that Sun had assaulted its partner's wearer - he wouldn't have been at all surprised, considering the morning's events. However, whatever it was had apparently stopped happening and he was still both alive and conscious, which suggested that either she had finished or the blow had simply been the result of the human's clumsiness. Whatever it was, he hoped that it had finished, since being randomly attacked by remote control wasn't going to add much to his authority. 

~~~

Aeryn stood looking down at the figure now sprawled on the floor, holding its head and swearing furiously in a language which she didn't understand in the slightest but whose tone was easily interpreted, and tried not to smile. It was something of a lost cause - much as he had been incredibly stupid, the sheer familiarity of his doing something as ridiculous as this was actually rather sweet. And, really, it was hard to be angry with someone who had chased her round the entire ship, only to run into a doorframe and collapse at her feet, however unintentionally. 

"So", she inquired, "why, exactly, were you playing a game with Lieutenant Braca? It can't have been his fascinating conversation." 

John rolled onto his back and shifted his hands until he could look up at her. 

"He took Wynnona. I was trying to win her back." 

That made sense. It would, of course, be something small and almost meaningless, and John was irrationally attached to the pulse pistol. 

"And did you?" 

"Did I what?" 

Aeryn sighed. "Did you win it back?" 

"Damn..." 

"Oh, well done. Have I told you that you can be unbelievably idiotic sometimes?" 

"Often. God, my head..." 

Aeryn crouched down to examine the bruise forming above his left eyebrow. 

"You'll live," she announced finally. 

"Great. Thanks for the sympathy, too." 

"It was entirely your own fault." 

"Hey, you were the one who was doing the damn roadrunner act." 

"Is it worth asking?" 

"Doubt it. He ran away from things a lot." 

"I see." 

John's curiosity got the better of him. 

"Ah...Aeryn? What were you doing with Scorpius, this, um...?" 

"Looking for you, since I woke up and you'd disappeared. I bumped into Scorpius, he asked me where you were, and then he opened the door and...you were." 

_Why did you have to go and ask? You think she was wandering around the ship arm in arm with Scorpy, talking to bluebirds?_

"Aeryn, I...I'm sorry. I mean, all this. It was stupid, I know." 

"You're right. It was." 

John looked up and studied her expression as best he could, given that the face it was on was nearly six feet above him. Despite her clipped tones, she was wearing a faint smile, which suggested that he wasn't in too much trouble. 

He let his gaze linger on her face for slightly longer than was necessary, until she rearranged it into something approaching a disapproving glare and cocked an eyebrow, wordlessly demanding what the frell he thought he was doing. Maintaining a carefully nonchalant expression, he shifted his eyes downward slightly, moving them with slow determination while Aeryn looked at him ever more disbelievingly, and finally asked the question verbally. 

"What the frell," she demanded, "do you think you are doing, John?" 

"i'm...appreciating the view," he replied solemnly, keeping his eyes working on their census of said view. 

"Is it a good view, then?" 

"Amazing. Wonderful...mountains." 

Aeryn's eyebrows clambered a little further up her forehead. 

"Really? Well, what if the mountains were to suddenly move away?" she asked, walking across the room and sitting down on the bed. John rolled onto his elbows and looked at her sternly. 

"Now, in my experience, Aeryn, that isn't something mountains do a lot. But, I suppose, if they _were_ to do something that un-mountain-like, I would have to follow them." 

"Seems like a good plan to me." She sat back and watched as he pulled himself to his feet, not taking his eyes off her. 

"I've been thinking," he said, "about my actions. I think it's time I apologised..." 

"You already did." 

"...properly." 

~~~

Scorpius listened to various Peacekeepers recount their encounters with the intruder. All were of a similar nature - they had entered their quarters and found something which was described as smallish and consisting mainly of hair. When approached or fired on, the creature would vanish, taking with it some small item of clothing. 

His ability to concentrate on the problem was being somewhat hampered by the strange things that seemed to be happening to his mouth. Whatever Crichton was doing now, while not as distracting as being suddenly hit, it was not conducive to finding solutions to hair-monsters. 

The talking had stopped, and everyone in the room was looking expectantly at the head seat. Everyone, that is, except the unfortunate Lieutenant Braca, who had carefully selected a seat as far from the head as possible and was staring resolutely at the table. He'd succeeded in tidying himself up, Scorpius noticed, although he was still faintly green. 

Scorpius pulled himself back to the matter in hand. 

"Has anyone encountered this creature outside of their quarters?' he asked. 

One hand went up, attached to a young woman whom Scorpius vaguely recognised as being something to do with engineering. 

"I caught a glimpse of it in cargo bay ten, but it disappeared when it saw me." 

"Oh? Is there a possibility that it could be building a nest of some kind? It would account for its stealing clothes." 

"I'll have someone check the cargo bays for signs of one, sir." 

The meeting progressed, with ideas being tossed around and mostly rejected, as in all such situations. Scorpius tried to keep up and look normal, whilst determinedly ignoring whatever was happening to his tongue and taking no notice, for now, of the nagging suspicions now being formed - suspicions which were only added to by the increasing sensation of pressure around his ears. Time enough to berate Crichton later. 

Then, rather suddenly, it stopped. Scorpius thanked any available god, since, along with the distraction and difficulty talking, his jaw had been beginning to ache, just to add another dimension to the still-persisting headache. His relief was short-lived, however, since a moment later what felt worryingly like fingers began to trace their way down his chest. 

~~~

John was suddenly aware of a pause in Aeryn's ministrations, and of an impatient tapping on his stomach. He propped himself up and looked down. The sebacean was staring fixedly at his nether regions with a strangely deadpan expression. 

"What," she inquired gently, "are these?" 

"_Huh_?" 

She moved slightly, allowing him to see more clearly that, in place of his familiar and much-loved white Calvins, he was clad in something made of black and red leather, with a look about it that very clearly said 'Peacekeeper'. He groaned and lay back. 

"Great," he informed the underside of the top bunk. "Just frelling wonderful." 

When he looked up again, Aeryn was staring at him quizzically. 

"I guess I must have put them on by accident after...you know. We had to get dressed pretty quickly, what with Scorpy banging on the door and all." 

"You're telling me this is Lieutenant Braca's underwear?" 

John winced. "Yeah." 

"Well, are you going to give it back?" 

"You know, I have a feeling if I go anywhere near him ever again he'll probably shoot me." 

"True," Aeryn conceded, returning to the task in hand. A few microts later, Braca's pants described a graceful arc across the room, landing on a chair in the opposite corner. 

~~~ 

In lieutenant Braca's recently-vacated quarters, there was a faint pop and, a moment later, a gentle thump. The hair-monster straightened up cautiously and approached the post-snap litter still occupying a large part of the room. It poked at the residue in the glasses, licked its fingers, made a face and turned its attention to the scattered items of clothing adorning the floor, picking each one up and sniffing it before throwing it down again with an air of great disappointment. 

Suddenly, it caught another, far more attractive scent, which it followed, first on foot and then crawling on hands and knees until, eventually, from behind Braca's bed, it triumphantly extracted a single faded blue sock. Cackling gleefully, it dived through the door in pursuit of the sock's owner. 

~~~ 

Scorpius' eyes were beginning to glaze over with the effort of maintaining a normal expression and trying his best to take no notice of whatever it was Crichton was doing. Fortunately, the meeting appeared to have dissolved into a complicated argument over how best to deal with an enemy that vanished when you tried to catch it and then further dissolved into a much more heated argument over whether it should be referred to as an intruder or as some new kind of pest. 

The fingers stopped, and he had to forcefully restrain himself from breathing a sigh of relief. Maybe it was... 

Cold. A sudden, surprising sensation of coolness. 

And then, not as suddenly - in fact, if truth be told almost _teasingly_ - an equally surprising sensation of warmth, and now there was no doubt whatsoever about what Crichton had been doing with his mouth. 

_He wouldn't. Not with the bracelets. Surely not even he would be stupid enough to...ah! _

He would. 

"Sir? Are you all right?" 

Scorpius opened the eyes he had been unaware that he had closed, to discover twenty or so confused expressions examining him curiously. Apparently the gasp had been out loud. 

"Sir?" 

"I...I...fine..." Scorpius managed. The asker eyed him doubtfully, taking in the white hands gripping the table edge hard enough to make the knuckles even whiter. and the glassy expression. 

"Are you _s_--" 

"Yes!" The voice had an edge of panicked snarl which suggested that pressing the matter further would be somewhat suicidal. He turned back to the table and contrived to indicate, using only his eyebrows, that the best approach would be to ignore the occasional small strangled sounds coming from the person supposedly in charge and proceed as usual. 

_Glup._

_Scrabblescrabblescrabble._

_Snuffle._

Under the table, the hair-monster darted from foot to foot, sniffing at ankles and muttering in disappointment as they all turned out to be not only the wrong person, but the wrong species. Above it, the argument was winding down and chairs were being pushed back to allow their occupants to peer under the table in search of the source of the noise. 

The monster paused and glanced back at a foot it had just passed over as being entirely wrong. There was something...an overtone of familiarity. It buried its nose in the sock it was still carrying, just to check. Yes, that was it. Somehow, the conflicting scent was absolutely _right_. With an ecstatic squawk, it leapt toward its source. 

Lieutenant Braca screamed and propelled himself backwards from the table with sufficient force to crash into the wall behind him. When he came to a standstill, slightly dazed, the mass of hair now occupying his lap stopped clinging leechlike to his jacket and resumed its quest to get to the part of lieutenant Braca from which emanated the smell so like that of the sock. Braca whimpered and tried to push it off, but it snarled at him and grabbed his arms with surprising strength, so he settled for just whimpering. 

Someone levelled a pulse-pistol at it and fired. 

The creature looked up and vanished abruptly. 

Braca gave a high-pitched scream and folded up as the bolt, deprived of its original target, hit him squarely in the knee. Several Peacekeepers rushed across the room to either help him or, at the very least, shut him up, while the rest stood up to search the room for the hair-monster. Eventually it was established that it was nowhere to be found and the lieutenant, no longer screaming but grey and barely-conscious, was carted off to the medical facility. Someone turned to the head seat, intending to ask Scorpius for instructions, but he, too, had disappeared. 

~~~ 

Several corridors away, Scorpius leant, panting, against a wall, and swore fervently that if he even considered using the bracelets for anything again, ever, he would have someone kill him quickly. Having his brain invaded by the lusts of an insane alien was not something he _ever_ wanted to experience again, and the worst part of it was that he kept having his thought processes interrupted by a less clinical voice which was admiring in the extreme of Sun's talents, if not in a particularly coherent fashion. He could, in theory, find some way to stop them - but if he did that he would have to be on the receiving end of John's half-finished frustration until the bracelets came off, which would be infinitely worse and almost as distracting. The only available course of action seemed to be to stay here until they finished and then, when his mind was working properly again, decide how to deal with them. 

~~~

John gave a final gasp, a satisfied sigh and relaxed into the pathetic mattress, while Aeryn pulled herself back up the bed and lay down beside him. 

"Can I take it that I'm forgiven, then?" 

"Absolutely not. You are going to be paying for that for a _long_ time." 

"We-ell, I think if the payment all works like this I could deal, y'know?" 

There was something that was partly a knock and more a resounding crash at the door. John glanced at Aeryn, who shrugged, indicating that it was his turn to do the work. He rolled off the bed, taking a sheet with him and wrapping it round his waist for some semblance of decency. He could always say that he'd been napping, or something. 

He punched a button and the door slid back, revealing Scorpius, who looked awful. He was breathless and looked like he had just stopped running, and he was glaring at John with an expression of insane malevolence like unto nothing the astronaut had ever seen. 

"You," he growled, "are either the most benightedly stupid lifeform I have ever enountered, or you are insane, or, possibly you are both." 

"Whoa, Scorpy. What exactly have i done?" 

"Done?" Scorpius spluttered. "_Done_? This..." he waved an arm at John's lack of clothing and Aeryn, eyeing him curiously whilst recumbent on the bed. "Could you not curb your adolescent instincts for a few solar days, John? Are you _that_ undisciplined? As far as officer Sun goes, I--" 

John raised a hand in an attempt to slow the tirade. 

"Wait a minute, wait a minute. How did you _kn_..." he trailed off, looking at his upraised arm, with specific reference to the bracelet encircling his wrist. "These bracelet things...they don't...uh...do they transmit impulses _other_ than pain?" 

"You grasp my meaning with all of your usual perception, Crichton. You will be off my ship in one arn. I will meet you in the docking bay then." He turned in a swirl of leather that spoke volumes about affronted melodrama and, too irritated to stalk, stomped down the corridor. 

~~~ 

After the allotted arn, John and Aeryn walked into the docking bay to find Scorpius already there, looking slightly saner than he had the last time they saw him. He was almost calm as he exchanged the codes to release the I-yensch bracelets with John, although his relief as the thing unlocked itself and came away from his wrist was palpable. Aside from the code, he didn't speak until the two were halfway through the transport pod's hatchway. 

"Crichton!" 

John turned and looked at him enquiringly. 

"You might want these." John instinctively caught the scrap of white fabric before he was aware that it had been thrown, or of what it was. He looked at it, identified it, followed a train of thought that he _really_ didn't want to follow, opened his mouth to ask and was jerked sharply inside by Aeryn, whose instinct for self-preservation was still alive and kicking. The hatchway hissed shut and the pod moved, slowly, towards the end of the bay. 

~~~ 

In space there are few outside observers, and therefore, as the transport pod glided towards the much larger shape of Moya, it was unlikely that there would be anyone to see a smaller and hair-covered shape detach itself from the hull and glide toward the leviathan's outer hull. Nor was it probable that there was anyone to observe as, while the ship prepared to starburst, the shape vanished downwards _through_ the surface, before the whole thing was lost in a blaze of light. Nevertheless, against all odds, the events had an audience. 

In the region of space which had, microts earlier, contained Moya, a point of blue light, which had been indistinguishable from the surrounding stars, began to expand. As it grew it changed shape and, at its centre, the misty light coalesced into two vague figures. As their definition increased they took on the appearance of two young women standing side-by-side. The expressions on their faces showed an odd blend of annoyance and tranquillity as they gazed at the stars twinkling where a large ship should have been. 

"I knew we shouldn't have let her go off on her own," said the taller of the two, with a musical sigh. 

"Well, what's the worse that can happen? She can look after herself." 

"I suppose so. But still, we probably ought to get her back. People never seem to appreciate her." 

"You may be right." 

The two figures blurred back into a mass of light, which contracted. When it had become a point, it sped away in pursuit of the departed ship, vanishing quickly into the distance. 


End file.
